Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice

333 Pages·2021·25.559 MB·English

by  Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor

Building Abolition
Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice explores the intersections of the
carceral in projects of oppression, while at the same time providing intellectual,
pragmatic, and undetermined paths toward abolition. Prison abolition is at once
about the institution of the prison, and a broad, intersectional political project
calling for the end of the social structured by settler colonialism, anti-b lack
racism, and related oppressions. Beyond this, prison abolition is a constructive
project that imagines and strives for a transformed world in which justice is not
equated with punishment, and accountability is not equated with caging.
Composed of 16 chapters by an international team of scholars and activists,
with a foreword by Perry Zurn and an afterword by Justin Piché, the book is
divided into four themes:
• Prisons and racism
• Prisons and settler colonialism
• Anti- carceral feminisms
• Multispecies carceralities.
This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students,
activists, and scholars working in the areas of Critical Prison Studies, Critical
Criminology, Native Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Black Studies, Critical Race
Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Critical Animal Studies, with par-
ticular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as
Feminist Legal Studies, Animal Law, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory,
and Transnational Feminisms.
Kelly Struthers Montford is Assistant Professor of Criminology at Ryerson
University in Toronto, Canada, situated in the “Dish With One Spoon
Territory”. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe,
Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and
protect the land.
Chloë Taylor is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University
of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, situated on Treaty 6 territory, a traditional
gathering place for diverse Indigenous peoples including the Cree, Blackfoot,
Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway/ Saulteaux/ Anishinaabe, and Inuit.
Routledge Studies in Penal Abolition and Transformative
Justice Series
Michael J. Coyle and David Scott
The Routledge Studies in Penal Abolition and Transformative Justice book series
provides the leading publishing location for literature that both reflects key
abolitionist thought and helps to set the agenda for local and global aboli-
tionist ideas and interventions. It fosters research that works toward the systemic
and systematic dismantling of penal structures and processes, and toward social
living that is grounded in relationships that consider the needs of all. This inter-
national book series seeks contributions from all around the world (east, north,
south, and west) that both engages and furthers abolitionist and transformative
practice, study, politics and theory. It welcomes work that examines abolition
and transformative justice empirically, theoretically, historically, culturally, spa-
tially, or rhetorically, as well as books that are situated within or at the interstices
of critiques of ableism, capitalism, hetero-normativity, militarism, patriarchy,
state power, racism, settler colonialism, and xenophobia.
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Penal-Abolition-
and-Transformative-Justice/book-series/PATJ#:~:text=About%20
the%20Series,global%20abolitionist%20ideas%20and%20interventions.
Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice
Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor
Contesting Carceral Logic
Michael J Coyle and Methchild Nagel
Building Abolition
Decarceration and Social Justice
Edited by
Kelly Struthers Montford
and Chloë Taylor
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor to be identified as the authors of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 34987- 5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 77028- 0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 429- 32917- 3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
On a personal note, this volume is dedicated to Jacques,
Guillaume, and Noireau, who have shaped us and our will
to unsettle dominant forms of relating, autonomy, and care.
Broadly, this volume is a gesture to the praxis of solidarity and
world- building. It is dedicated to those who resist, struggle,
and live within the metaphoric and literal cages of carcerality.

Contents
List of contributors x
Foreword: Abolition is a kite-idea xii
PERRY ZURN
Series editors’ foreword xx
MICHAEL J. COYLE AND DAVID SCOTT
Introduction: Doing abolition 1
KELLY STRUTHERS MONTFORD AND CHLOË TAYLOR
PART I
Prisons and racism 13
1 Prison abolitionism and critical race theory 15
FERNANDO AVILA AND JESSICA BUNDY
2 Racial innocence, liberal reformism, and immigration
detention: Toward a politics of abolition 29
SARAH TURNBULL
3 The thin blue line between protection and persecution:
Policing LGBTQ2S refugees in Canada 43
ALEXA DEGAGNE AND MEGAN GAUCHER
4 Abolishing innocence: Disrupting the racist/ ableist
pathologies of childhood 58
LIAT BEN- MOSHE, NIRMALA EREVELLES AND ERICA R. MEINERS
viii Contents
PART II
Prisons and settler colonialism 69
5 Aan yátx’u sáani! Decolonial meditations on building
abolition 71
SOL NEELY
6 Settler colonialism, incarceration, and the abolitionist
imperative: Lessons from an Australian youth
detention center 97
LISA GUENTHER
7 Settler colonialism, anti- colonial theory, and “indigenized”
prisons for Indigenous women 110
DANIELLE BIRD (NÊHIYAW)
8 “The women that died in there, that’s all I could think
of”: The P4W Memorial Collective and garden initiative 122
ISABEL SCHEUNEMAN SCOTT, FRAN CHAISSON
AND BOBBIE KIDD
PART III
Anti- carceral feminisms 149
9 Starting with life: Murder sentencing and feminist prison
abolitionist praxis 151
DEBRA PARKES
10 Looking from northwest to southeast: Feminist carceralism,
gender equality and global responses to gender- based
violence 165
DAWN MOORE AND VERED BEN- DAVID
11 Remembering Carol Smart: Tensions between feminism,
victims’ rights and abolitionism 184
JENNIFER M. KILTY AND KATARINA BOGOSAVLJEVIC
12 Carceral enjoyments and killjoying the social life of
social death 196
ANDREW DILTS
Contents ix
PART IV
Multispecies carceralities 225
13 The “carceral enjoyments” of animal protection 227
KELLY STRUTHERS MONTFORD AND EVA KASPRZYCKA
14 Carceral canines: Racial terror and animal abuse from slave
hounds to police dogs 248
PAULA CEPEDA GALLO AND CHLOË TAYLOR
15 Trauma as a Möbius strip: PTSD, animal research, and the
Oak Ridge prisoner experiments 269
LAUREN CORMAN
16 Coexistence as resistance: Humans and non- human animals
in carceral settings 286
CALVIN JOHN SMILEY
Afterword: Building abolition in pandemic times 298
JUSTIN PICHÉ
Index 306